Daizell accepted the acclaim with becoming modesty, let Mr Bignall buy him a drink, and put away his things, giving Cassian a slightly embarrassed look as the watchers dispersed. ‘Hello, there. Success?’
‘Yes, it was easier than I had feared. You seem to have been busy?’
‘Well, you seemed a little worried about funding, so . . .’ He shrugged. ‘A few shillings here and there, it adds up. Street-corner flummery, I know.’
‘But impressive. Did you really cut that man’s profile in a count of a hundred? Do you not have to draw the outline?’
‘I taught myself to do without. I had a lot of time on my hands.’ He shrugged again. ‘It’s a party trick, nothing more.’
It seemed to Cassian to be a remarkable skill, if not a profession. ‘Are there not studios for profilers?’
‘There are, yes. John Miers in London has a positive factory now, with people tracing shadows and drawing from them, and there’s another fellow, Charles, doing the same. Both of them undercutting the other’s prices and makinglife harder for everyone else. You can charge five shillings for a painted shade in the provinces where you’d only get a shilling in London now.’
‘Weren’t you charging three?’
Daizell looked distinctly embarrassed. ‘Well, these are just cuts, no paint. And I’d already won a pound off that fellow.’
Cassian wasn’t generally a wagering man, but he had witnessed many a bet, and was quite used to stakes in two, three or even four figures. There was something so small, so vulnerable about betting a pound and having the outcome matter. It ought not matter, and Daizell ought not to be so close to disaster that a pound seemed worth betting. The hundred pounds in his own pocket felt uncomfortable and obtrusive.
‘What if you hadn’t been able to do it, though?’ he asked. ‘If you’d lost?’
‘Please,’ Daizell said. ‘I can cut a profile in a count of sixty if I have to. The hard part is timing it to ninety-something.’
‘Oh.’ It seemed rather unethical to bet if he knew perfectly well he could do it. ‘Is that quite fair?’
‘I’m sure you disapprove,’ Daizell said, flushing. ‘I dare say you should. But I make my living, such as it is, cutting profiles in inns for shillings, betting on my skills, and performing at parties to earn my place. I don’t have the option of going to a bank to refresh my pockets. I’m well aware it isn’t the occupation of a gentleman, but I don’t have a great deal of choice.’
Cassian recoiled at his tone. ‘I didn’t say anything.’
‘You were thinking it.’ There was tension in Daizell’s face. ‘Cutting profiles for my supper allows me to maintain a little more self-respect than out-and-out begging, that’s all. I dare say a man of actual self-respect finding himself in myposition would have fled to the Continent, or won a fortune at the gaming tables, or taken up honest labour, but I don’t speak French, play, or have any other talents, which rather limits my options.’
He was sounding disturbingly brittle. Cassian put a hand on his arm and felt tension twanging along it. ‘I see you must feel your position painfully, but you’re doing what you can in the circumstances. And if you want to know what I think, it’s that this whole business is horribly unfair – what your parents did and how you were blamed, and Sir James, all of it. It’s miserably unjust that you should be reduced to this—’
‘Reduced. That’s the word,’ Daizell said. ‘That’s the point. I’m less than other people – than Vier, or you – because of my father, and Vier’s lies, and all of it, but really because of this.’ He gestured at the scissors and bits of cut paper. ‘Gentlemendon’t exploit their skills for profit in alehouses. Agentlemanexhibits his talent purely for the amusement of his friends. Well, forgive me if I’m no longer a gentleman, but I should rather bring in a few shillings than be left high and dry. That isn’t a comfortable position.’
‘You didn’t have to do it now,’ Cassian said blankly. ‘I was fetching money . . . You didn’t think I’d come back? Daize, were you worried I wouldn’t come back?’
Red bloomed over Daizell’s cheekbones, though he made a fine stab at airiness. ‘It’s not unknown for a gentleman to cut his losses, or abandon his obligations, when he feels the pinch.’
‘I would not do that. I swear.’ He slid his hand down, grabbing Daizell’s fingers. ‘I just went to get money! I don’t abandon people I care for. I would not abandon you.’
The words came without thought, without the consideration a duke should give his every utterance. Daizell gavehim one desperately open, hopeful look and then shut his eyes tight.
Cassian’s heart was thumping, with panic and with a sense of teetering on the edge of something huge and frightening and wonderful. He squeezed Daizell’s fingers and released them, too aware they were in public, wanting to say—
He couldn’t say it. He only had the remains of his month as Cassian. Then he would be Severn again, and everything would go back to how it had been.
He didn’t want that.
He had no idea what he wanted instead.
He shoved the thoughts aside for now. The important thing for the moment was that Daizell should not have that hurt, lost look in his eyes. ‘I wouldn’t do that. And I think you’re marvellous.’
‘Oh, come.’
‘Truly. I don’t know how you talk to strangers so well but I should like to learn, and as for the cutting, it seems to me to be pure sorcery. I admire it immensely, and I admire that you have developed a skill and use it.’ He would have liked to mention some of the many unrewarding hangers-on who had lived off Staplow – they’d had an exceptionally dull ex-military friend of Lord Hugo’s for a full twelvemonth – but any story would have raised questions he didn’t want to answer. ‘I wouldn’t know what to do in your place, or how to go about making a life I didn’t expect to lead, alone.’
Cassian had never feared for his own finances, or his social position, which he would probably have to commit public murder to lose, and no matter how exasperating and domineering his family were, he’d never doubted their love or loyalty. To lose all that in a night was unthinkable. ‘It wasterrible, what your parents did to you,’ he said intently. ‘And you have done your best with what was left. It is hardly your fault you cannot behave like a wealthy gentleman when you aren’t wealthy.’
